Thursday, November 25, 2010

//More than 80 per cent of the loan portfolio of housing finance companies consists of home loans. Their direct exposure to developers and builders is usually small as a share of the total asset portfolio.//

This is what I read in the article about housing scam in rediffmoney.

Apart from not knowing what they expect of housing finance companies, is not one prompted to ask what constitutes their 20% unmentioned portfolio. [bribes to those concerned?]

Is it not reasonable to expect some amount of direct exposure since promoters, developers and builders work not on individual properties as in the past but some of them are engaged in creating new townships ? But the question to be settled is where did the corruption cycle start ?

1. With the overeager buyer of property who wanted some thing beyond his means and wanted the sanctioning authority to close his eyes on critically examining certain factors like pay back capability, payback period, actual value of property

2. Sanctioning authority who was dealing in crores but did not have a status of his own and wanted to accelerate the process of acquiring a car because of a greediness encouraged by factor 1.

3. People who did not have any thing else to do other than indulge in brokering loans. [I have come across far too many of them]

4. Property developers who were willing to bribe if the bank officers insisted on loan takers making the choice on their properties.

But all these may give rise to irregularities in small packets only. How it became unwritten policy ? Who were the brokers and who were the promoters who benefited ? Any attempt at converting B to W ?